Monster Scholar

With all the good reviews of Grace going around, horror seems primed for yet another killer baby movie. This time it’s It’s Alive and the trailer has got me as scared of motherhood as I’ve ever been.The plot of the original is simple: a mutant baby born to unsuspecting parents goes on a killing rampage whenever it feels scared. Don’t wake the baby. The birthing scene reminds me of the alien autopsy in I ndependence Day , an appropriate parallel considering Lenore’s baby is an alien menace that kills at will and a commentary on the nature of birth. It is also interesting to note that Lenore’s repeated concern that there is something wrong with the baby goes unheeded by the male medical establishment that dismisses her female intuition. I enjoyed the near-closing dialogue of the trailer. Someone tells the father “It’s dead Frank,” to which he replies “No. It’s alive” This snippet is of course referring the film’s title, which riffs off of fears of the in-between nature of newborns. For ...

There is a new “trailer” for New Moon floating around on MTV.com . I use the term “trailer” loosely because the minute and a half vignette is more like a behind the scenes special, with a Taylor Lautner interview spliced with new scenes from the movie. Taylor claims that New Moon “is a lot more complicated than Twilight was,” but from where I’m sitting it looks like the same old emo rag we’ve been bombarded with in the first film. Bella spirals into a depression after Edward leaves her in order to keep her safe (as if that makes any sense). Jacob steps in as the friend who comforts Bella in all his shirtless and tanned glory. On that note, Jacob’s hair is having some serious continuity issues in this trailer with shots of him in long locks intermixed with his shorter do. Jacob also doesn’t miss an opportunity to go shirtless, as he offers Bella his clothing when she’s injured and does some impressive Cirque du Soleil acrobatics to catapult himself into Bella’s window. I am also ama...

The original trailer for Zombieland had everything a girl could ask for, comedy, action and the right amount of violence and gore. Woody Harrelson was hilarious as the renegade zombie hunter who bears a close resemblance to Steve Martin of Little Shop of Horrors ( My momma always said I’d be good at something… ) and the mention of Zombie Kill of the Week inspired the series of zombie kills now found on my blog. I was in trailer heaven. But that was before the release of the red band trailer. Not to say it’s too gory. I can take my fair share of squished zombie limbs and messy head-on collisions with the best of them, but (you knew there was going to be a but) it feels like the creators of the trailer might have just rounded up all the rudest, crudest moments they could find in the film and crammed them into this three minute raunchfest. Despite this feat, the trailer does manage a few good points. Among them are the zombie stripper, complete with tassels and dollar bills in her g-str...

Welcome to the first installment of the Trailer Park, a place for me to review the good, the bad and the ugly trailers of horror movies past and present. Today’s subject is the trailer for Dorian Gray by Momentum pictures. The trailer’s depiction of London is reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd , with big sweeps of the foggy industrial mecca rendered with CGI, coupled with claustrophobic street close-ups. Focusing on Dorian, I love that the only difference between innocent Dorian pre-portrait and the jaded libertine he will become is the removal of a schoolboy hat and tie. The trailer flirts with the idea of masks and the deceit of outer appearances, an apt subject considering Dorian’s beauty is only an illusion. Dorian confesses to a blind priest “this is not my true face” and then glimpses himself in a silver serving tray at party where the guests are all in masks. Collin Firth, whose credits include Bridget Jones’s Diary and Shakespeare in Love is the decadent Lord Henry who l...

“You’ve done terrible things. Be strong”--Anthony Hopkins The Wolfman A bootleg trailer for 2009's The Wolfman was leaked to the internet back in July of 2008 and I just got a chance to see it and share some thoughts. It has a distinctive Sleepy Hollow feel to it with its depiction of a dreary 1880s London and the isolated inhabitants of the town being threatened by a ravenous beast. Cinematically my favorite part of the trailer was the shot of a terrified Emily Blunt hiding behind a tree while a wolfish Benicio can be seen in the background. An interesting thing I gleaned from the trailer is that the film’s treatment of the werewolf might go beyond just the physical transformation and explore the concept of lycanthropy as a mental disease. Toro is depicted bound in a straight jacket in the middle of a crowded operating theater and screams “I will kill all of you!” as his hands turn into claws. His immersion in ice water also resembles a kind of turn of the century calming treatme...

PETA is going to be pissed. So, I just got a chance to watch and respond to the New Moon trailer. Unlike some of my comrade bloggers in horror, I am not completely disgusted by Twilight , perhaps because I won't allow myself to dignify this film with such a strong response. I can take it or leave depending on the day (Wednesdays are good), the tides and if I've eaten. But as a woman I have major problems with the character of Bella who (more than ever in the trailer) seems to need a man in one form or another to "protect" her when the shit hits the fan. Whatever happened to the Jamie Lee Curtis's and other final girls of the world who didn't need any help to put down a knife-weilding psychopath? Though I admit that Twilight and the upcoming New Moon are definite soft-core derivatives of the horror genre, I had hoped that aside from ditching the gore they wouldn't flush feminist gains the down the crapper too. Taylor Launter (Jacob), with his brooding ...